Samantha Lai

New Paradigms in Trust and Safety: Navigating Defederation on Decentralized Social Media Platforms Defederation on decentralized social media offers new possibilities for online governance. Experts consider how it can be used responsibly, in a way that balances speech and safety.

An article by @samlai.bsky.social @yoyoel.com @noupside.bsky.social @klonick.bsky.social @mallory.techpolicy.social.ap.brid.gy @evan.cosocial.ca.ap.brid.gy and @aaron.bsky.team?!?!?!

Basically the Wu-Tang Clan of the fediverse right here...

Well played, @carnegieendowment.org

Super grateful that I got to explore these questions with @yoyoel.com, @noupside.bsky.social, @klonick.bsky.social, @mallory.techpolicy.social.ap.brid.gy, @evan.cosocial.ca.ap.brid.gy, and @aaron.bsky.team!

New Paradigms in Trust and Safety: Navigating Defederation on Decentralized Social Media Platforms Defederation on decentralized social media offers new possibilities for online governance. Experts consider how it can be used responsibly, in a way that balances speech and safety.

Defederation on decentralized social media offers new possibilities for online governance. How can it be used responsibly, in a way that balances speech and safety?

Read more here:

Our very own @samlai.bsky.social will be speaking at this panel next Wednesday. Learn more here:

Assessing National Information Ecosystems To know how a system has changed, one must first know what constitutes the system and its prior state.

Governments are intervening in information ecosystems with very little understanding of how they work. That leads to a belief that there are lessons learned in one that can be applied to others. But what might work in Finland could be disastrous elsewhere:
carnegieendowment.org/research/202...

Assessing National Information Ecosystems To know how a system has changed, one must first know what constitutes the system and its prior state.

@lageneralista.ca, @samlai.bsky.social and John Hicks propose a framework for assessing national information ecosystems that can help policymakers understand the operating environment where threats like foreign interference exist.

carnegieendowment.org/research/202...

Measuring Changes Caused by Generative Artificial Intelligence: Setting the Foundations Informed policy that leads to beneficial change is extremely challenging to develop without being able to measure the material impacts of GenAI.

In a new publication, @samlai.bsky.social, @benimmo.bsky.social, Derek Ruths and @lageneralista.ca lay out four key questions that underpin successful measurement of changes caused by GenAI:

Congrats to @samlai.bsky.social and a big thank you to everyone who contributed. Shout out to Jon Bateman for his help on the final stretch. @ieproject.bsky.social takes a village to be sure.

Each info ecosystem is different. But often researchers/policymakers look at their own and devise frameworks to apply elsewhere. @samlai.bsky.social has put many months into this piece for @ieproject.bsky.social highlighting why we need a more inductive approach to understand the info environment.

Phenomenal work by @samlai.bsky.social at CEIP - featuring my comments on public health communication in Vietnam and the persistence of legacy media infrastructure, in particular the loudspeaker network.

Understanding the Information Environment: Insights from the Majority World Researchers around the world address shortcomings and provide recommendations on Global North approaches to research and policymaking.

What is interesting about this excellent article by @samlai.bsky.social is that many of these concerns also apply in global minority countries. Understanding better how the context affects the demand of information quality is probably the next research question

carnegieendowment.org/research/202...

Understanding the Information Environment: Insights from the Majority World Researchers around the world address shortcomings and provide recommendations on Global North approaches to research and policymaking.

In what ways do Global North approaches to research and policymaking on the information environment fall short at addressing Majority World concerns? How can they be improved? I spoke with 54 experts around the world to learn more:

carnegieendowment.org/research/202...

391: Dispatch from the Fediverse | Tech Policy Podcast Samantha Lai (Carnegie Endowment) discusses the state of federated social media (Bluesky, Threads, Mastodon, etc.). Topics include: - A map of the fediverse - What makes Bluesky new? - Tools for tin...

I did a podcast on the fediverse -- especially Bluesky -- with @samlai.bsky.social. Quite timely, if I say so myself! Check it out.

podcast.techfreedom.org/episodes/391...

Reply on Bluesky and Decentralization | bryan newbold This is a reply to Christine Lemmer-Webber's thoughtful (and widely read) "How decentralized is Bluesky really?" blog post. I am so happy and grateful that Christine took the time to write up her tho...

It’s a bit more complicated than that! I liked what @dustyweb.bsky.social and @bnewbold.net had to say about it:

dustycloud.org/blog/how-dec...

whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net...

Fediverse Governance Drop - Erin Kissane's small internet website After a few months of prepping and conducting interviews and then many more months of analyzing and writing up what we found, we’re <a href=

If you’d like to read more about what governance looks like in the fediverse, I have to recommend @kissane.bsky.social and @tinysubversions.bsky.social’s report:
erinkissane.com/fediverse-go...

Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech

Of course we had to mention @mmasnick.bsky.social’s paper on “Protocols, Not Platforms”, which inspired this very platform:
knightcolumbia.org/content/prot...

Online Safety and the “Great Decentralization” – The Perils and Promises of Federated Social Media | TechPolicy.Press If we want to empower consumers and rebuild social media, we need to develop shared trust and safety capabilities, write Samantha Lai and Yoel Roth.

And here are some links to works I referenced in the podcast. A lot of what I cover here draws from my past work with @yoyoel.com:
www.techpolicy.press/online-safet...

Thanks @corbinkbarthold.bsky.social for inviting me on to chat about decentralized social media, Bluesky, and the trust and safety challenges associated with the space!

I compile these weekly threads on jobs and opportunities on all things related to the information environment. Hoping it’s useful to some folks out there, please do check it out!

The project I work on at CEIP joined Bluesky today. Give us a follow to get regular updates on publications and opportunities in the space!

Periodic reminder that I made a #trustandsafety starter pack. Let me know about new arrivals who should be added to this list!

Thank you! @evan.cosocial.ca.ap.brid.gy, Mallory Knodel and @tomcoates.bsky.social would be the folks to chat with about that!

Online Safety and the “Great Decentralization” – The Perils and Promises of Federated Social Media | TechPolicy.Press If we want to empower consumers and rebuild social media, we need to develop shared trust and safety capabilities, write Samantha Lai and Yoel Roth.

If we want to empower consumers and rebuild social media on decentralized platforms, we need to develop shared trust and safety capabilities, write Samantha Lai and Yoel Roth. www.techpolicy.press/online-safet...

Online Safety and the “Great Decentralization” – The Perils and Promises of Federated Social Media | TechPolicy.Press If we want to empower consumers and rebuild social media, we need to develop shared trust and safety capabilities, write Samantha Lai and Yoel Roth.

If we want to empower consumers and rebuild social media, we need to develop shared trust and safety capabilities, write @samlai.bsky.social and @yoyoel.com.

More than anything else I’ve written, my new piece about the “compliance-ization” of Trust and Safety felt like news reporting. It describes major changes in platform content moderation that are self-evident to many people inside platforms, and largely invisible to everyone else.

t.co/pwriZQqZhM

This work builds on a journal article that came out earlier this year. You can find that here:
www.tsjournal.org/index.php/jo...

Some work is already under way to close these gaps. The Social Web Foundation @evan.cosocial.ca.ap.brid.gy, @iftas.org, Columbia University’s Trust and Safety Tooling Consortium and others have been working to develop tooling for scalable trust and safety governance.

Here’s how we fix it:
(1) Larger platforms can fund tool development efforts and share info on their moderation decisions
(2) A multi stakeholder structured hub curating pooled data to identify threat actors
(3) Tool builders can create platforms for mods to share information with each other

tl;dr T&S on decentralized social media remains hindered by:
(1) a lack of technical tooling for scalable T&S operations
(2) architectural constraints where admins and mods only see what’s happening on their own instance, making it difficult to detect threats spread across multiple instances

Online Safety and the “Great Decentralization” – The Perils and Promises of Federated Social Media | TechPolicy.Press If we want to empower consumers and rebuild social media, we need to develop shared trust and safety capabilities, write Samantha Lai and Yoel Roth.

Decentralized social media platforms offer the promise of alternative governance, but remain ill-equipped to address threats to online safety. How can we change that?

Here’s the latest from @yoyoel.com and I:

www.techpolicy.press/online-safet...